Joe Pedicino passes away (confirmed)

[Joe Neglia]

EDIT: Confirmed by Meltzer

This hasn't been picked up yet anywhere, confirmed or verified beyond Hazlewood's post

[Crappler El 0 M]

RIP. I grew up in Georgia, so I watched Joe and his wife Boni Blackstone every Saturday for a time when they hosted a block of syndicated wrestling programs. He also was a WCW broadcaster for a time and he started the Global Wrestling Federation.

[Steveweiser]

Listening to Between the Sheets made me aware of his work. Getting a long wrestling block like that would have been a dream to watch as a kid. He helped a lot of guys get exposure.

[James Fabiano]

And of course most of us originally saw him on Pro Wrestling This Week, which was like the TV equivalent of PWI in that this was one place where we saw most of the other territories besides the Big Three.

["Magic" Mark Hurr]

RIP.

Great memories watching that 4hr block of wrestling he and Bonnie Blackstone used to host back in the day on Saturday nights.

[Squirrel Master]

Pro Wrestling This Week was must-see television for me; I always enjoyed Joe Pedicino's enthusiasm. R.I.P. good sir.

[jason1980s]

I remember his federation coming on like late 1993 or early 1994 which had the reruns of the 1991 episodes. It was nice that Del Wilkes and Sean Waltman posted about Joe getting their careers started because I remember a lot of their matches from those 1991 reruns although by 1993-1994 they had been well known. It was cool seeing them earlier in their careers. GWF may not have been as big as WWF or WCW but the shows were always very enjoyable and featured a lot of talent.

[Joe Neglia]

Apr 23, 2020 7:07:19 GMT -5 jason1980s said:

It was nice that Del Wilkes and Sean Waltman posted about Joe getting their careers.

Jerry Lynn, too. I'm sure others did, but that's the only other one I've come across.

History kind of left Pedicino behind, but he really was so very much more important to the business than he'll ever get credit for.

[zrowsdower]

I used to risk getting in trouble by calling his hotline to hear the results of raw and nitro and ppv's.

[johnnyk9]

Shame all these deaths recently

[Guacamole Anderson]

When I was a kid, we used to get Pro Wrestling This Week off a little UHF channel out of Ottumwa, Iowa. Man, those were the days...a big part of my fandom wrapped up in that show.

RIP, Joe.

[Joe Neglia]

Apr 24, 2020 14:47:59 GMT -5 @adnonlkc said:

I've always been amazed how the GWF had DAILY television on ESPN during weekday afternoons, yet made no money with it. They weren't paid for TV rights fees, but could have run live events or even PPVs if they wanted to, yet chose to just do shows at the Sportatorium. At the time, Dallas was basically a dead wrestling market due to the bad taste the Von Erich family tragedies left in people's mouths. But they were on ESPN nationally. Every damn day. And did nothing to try to actually run shows in other areas based on ESPN. Very quickly, they were just giving away free tickets to the Sportatorium to try to make the crowd size look acceptable for TV, but couldn't even sell tickets. No rights fees, no tickets sold in Dallas, no trying to even run other cities. Baffling.

I honestly think Pedicino didn't understand how utterly scorched earth Dallas was in terms of wrestling. He thought he could use it as a starting point, rebuild it from where USWA left off and get things rolling again, and then expand. It certainly didn't help that investors kept backing out, setting him back to square one repeatedly.